Letter to the Brethren: May 2, 2024

Dear Brethren and Co-Workers in Christ:

Greetings from the Five Cities region of California.

The Days of Unleavened Bread for 2024 are past. The Last Day of Unleavened Bread went well here, as well as from places we received reports from around the world.

In last week’s Letter to the Brethren, you may have noticed that we listed all of our current video platforms in the “Suggested Sabbath Day Services” section. That is intended to be a permanent feature of these weekly letters.

There are several reasons for that, but the main ones are:

1. In case the weekly letter does not reach you, you still should have the last one which has the video channel links.
2. In case one or more of the platforms removes us (or is otherwise down), you hopefully should have several other immediate platform options.

We have been censored in the past by both YouTube (which remains popular) and Vimeo (which we may one day drop), and by providing a regular list, hopefully you will be able to access our video sermons and sermonettes without interruption. Videos are one avenue for proclamation and teaching that we use.

As far as other teachings and proclamation matters go, we received another 20 translations of our English booklet titled The Gospel of the Kingdom of God to help prepare for the short work of Romans 9:28.

Internet Reach

Years back, we used to look at Alexa rankings to see global website reach. However, Alexa.com changed and now it is much easier to determine reach through similarweb.com.

We used to also have statistical programs at our websites, but they bogged down the servers too much (probably because of translation related issues) that we removed them.

(Pixabay’s AI generated world internet photo)

So, anyway, in the first time ever,  I looked at reach using similarweb.com. According to Similar Web, last month we had the following number of visits to the following listed websites:

• COGwriter.com               105,000
• Cdlidd.es                               7,800
• CCOG.org                             6,700
• BibleNewsProphecy.net    4,100

As far as overall world popularity, Similar Web reported that COGwriter.com was the 416,776 most popular website in the world. There are reportedly over 1,000,000,000 websites in the world (e.g. https://themeisle.com/blog/how-many-websites-are-there/#gref) which are less popular than www.cogwriter.com. So, despite “shadow banning” from Google (which has hurt that site’s accessibility), COGwriter remains popular.

So, we do have reach over the internet (radio too-see Continuing Church of God Multimedia page).

Plus, when we used to track statistics internally, we were able to prove that we had reached over 200 nations and territories–actually all of them that we were aware of–including North Korea which two of my former COG associations had not reached.

Now, let me add that with our Google campaign, we also made 5,600,000 impressions on computers and smart phones last month. This is a lot, but this is down because of Google policy changes that I am scheduled to speak with a Google representative about tomorrow.

That said, we still do have a worldwide reach over the internet as well as on radio.

Famine and Hunger Up

The United Nations reported that famine and hunger were up.

Part of the reason has been difficult weather in eastern Africa. South Sudan, Malawi, Mozambique, and Kenya are part of eastern Africa, and we have provided some assistance there for food. The UN also mentioned hunger in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where we have members and have also provided assistance.

In addition to financial assistance for food, Pastor Radson Mulozowa reported that the project to grow sunflowers we have assisted with is bearing fruit.

Kisii Report

Here is a report about growth and needs in Kisii in Kenya:

Photo from Last Day of Unleavened Bread in Kisii

I send my warmest regards to you and yours in the name of our lord Jesus Christ.

 Yes, I received three members who were in the living church of God for a long time and have confirmed that they will be worshipping with us every Sabbath.

   Please pray for me and the work here in Kisii. I have also those who were coming from far distances every Sabbath. They are still very active. I have a challenge of transportation to and fro. Feeding them every Sabbath too is a big challenge for me. But I thank God because he has a good plan for me and those who worship with us. I shared this with Evans Ochieng one time when he visited and witnessed me doing that. … But our God we worship has everything sufficient for us.

  I praise God and thank him too because my enemies were saying negative things to the church. They even said that my wife and I were only worshipping. But look! Many people have come in the name of our lord Jesus Christ. Even those who spoke against us are now in the church worshipping our God. What amazing! Others came out of Catholic church and some from SDA. This is the work of God and mine is just only to witness our lord Jesus Christ.

 It is my humble prayer that if God opens up away that I can get rid of the

 challenges that I mention above everything will be fine.

 As also looking forward to FOT our rooms are not done. There’s need to do finishing up and put the bedings ready. All these things are waiting to be accomplished on time.

    It is my humble prayer that my God to give me wisdom, understanding and knowledge on how I can serve him better. Increase my faith in this challenging world. May his kingdom come!

    Thanks and God bless.

   Yours fellow disciple of the Christ,

      Ezekiel Ombaso Oanda.

Ezekiel is in my prayers and we are looking at assisting with the transportation matter.

Rwanda and Burundi

Moise sent the following from Rwanda:

Dear Pastor Dr Bob , greetings from Rwanda and Congo. I’m happy to inform you that the Feast of unleavened bread we have finished well.

I am happy again to share with you the good news of this family from Burundi country near the border of Rwanda who wants to join CCOG. After exiting in SDA church we continued to discuss the beliefs of CCOG , so now with his colleagues as small group they want to join the CCOG .

Attached, you see photo of Norbert Ntahiraja with his wife and another photo on his Facebook where he started to promoting CCOG.

Prayers for them.

Best Regards,

Moise

We have received inquiries from Burundi before and it is nice to see something seemingly take root there.